New Worlds to Explore

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A while ago I met an astronaut. He had given a presentation about flying the space shuttle at a meeting I had arranged. Afterwards, I introduced myself and told him I had applied for the astronaut program in 1979 and been rejected. “Me too,” he said.”And again in 1980, and 1981, and every year for […]

This morning Elon Musk announced that his Falcon heavy rocket has succeeded in boosting a Tesla roadster into the Asteroid Belt. This is the first step toward a commercial space industry. Many people bemoan the new “Gilded Age” in which some become rich while widespread poverty continues to plague us. But standouts like Elon Musk […]

In the absence of any other model, it is currently fashionable to posit that consciousness and intelligence “emerge” out of the complexity of life. Our brains allow emergent intelligence to evolve. What this means is anyone’s guess. Let’s assume that it’s true, that out of sufficient complexity, consciousness and intelligence can emerge. How would this […]

In an earlier post, Inspiration, I mentioned how I came to consider a novel based on a revolution on Mars. This is hardly a new idea, but I spent a lot of time researching Martian geography and considering the economics of colonizing Mars. To some the colonization of Mars is a categorical imperative. To others […]

Today is a day to give thanks. I am thankful for many things and many people, far too many to list. Most of my blessings revolve around family. To all my family I send thanks for all they do to make my life overflow with blessings. Of more relevance to this blog, I am thankful […]

During part of my checkered past I was a Naval Aviator specializing in hunting submarines. Our Air Group flew off USS Wasp which had a very early computerized ASW management system. No submarine on Earth could hide from us. The economics of dedicating a carrier task force to hunt a single submarine plus the end […]

This little snippet arose out of a writing class I was taking at ed2go.com. We were given a plain vanilla description of a sunset and asked to improve it. When I lived in Lawrence Kansas the sunsets were nonpareil. A professor there told me that the gorgeous sunsets were the future of Kansas since they […]

Inspiration to write must, I think, be tailored to each writer and their mind. For me, I find the best inspiration in real life stories I have lived. I watched the 1967 Arab Israeli war from a hospital bed with an Army intel officer for a roommate. The commentary was fascinating but a story he […]

Moby Dick is a classic of American fiction. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex , on which Moby Dick is partly based, is a classic non-fiction book. I have always been fascinated by Moby Dick so I decided to do a take on it from the perspective of the white […]

A long, long time ago, but in a universe right here, I was sitting in a survival class for Student Naval Aviators. A lot of it was boring but at one point they played a tape of a naval aviator who had been shot down and floated in his life raft for a couple of […]